Poster #154 - Parents’ Self- and Partner-Oriented Parenting Perfectionism and Fathers’ Positive Engagement

• In Event: 2-110 - Poster Session 07
  In Poster Session: PS 07 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Parenting perfectionism refers to the extent to which parents hold excessively high standards for their own and their partners’ parenting (Snell et al., 2005). Parenting perfectionism has been associated with parenting styles, parental adjustment, attachment, and child-rearing behaviors (Greblo & Bratko, 2015; Lee et al., 2012; Snell et al., 2005). The current study aims to understand whether mothers’ and fathers’ self-and partner-oriented parenting perfectionism predict fathers’ early positive engagement in childrearing.
Data were drawn from a larger longitudinal study. The sample comprised 182 dual-earner couples with firstborn children (92 boys) that were followed through the third trimester, 3 and 9 months postpartum. Fathers’ engagement was measured with father-reports on the time diary interview using the procedure of the American Time Use Survey (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2006). Fathers reported on all activities they were primarily involved in on one recent workday and one recent non-workday. The total time that they spent in direct child enrichment activities (i.e., playing, talking and listening, reading, soothing and holding) was computed for workdays and non-workdays separately. Fathers also rated their overall frequency of positive engagement (i.e., how often in the past month they engaged in developmentally appropriate activities including playing games, singing, reading, etc.) using 4 items from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Parenting perfectionism (self- and partner-oriented) was measured using parents’ self-report on 12 items from the Multidimensional Parenting Perfectionism Questionnaire (Snell et al., 2005) at Time 1. Parents’ depressive symptoms were measured with parent self-reports on 3 items from the brief CES-D (Bonomi et al., 2008) at 3 months (Time 2). Path analysis was conducted with lavaan (Rosseel, 2012) using maximum likelihood estimation with robust standard errors. Missing data were handled with full information maximum likelihood estimation.
Table 1 shows descriptive statistics and correlations among study variables. Figure 1 displays the results of the path model. After controlling for maternal and paternal depressive symptoms, child gender, household income, paternal education, and paternal engagement measured at Time 2 (3 months), father’s self-oriented parenting perfectionism and partner-oriented parenting perfectionism measured at Time 1 (third trimester) were associated with lagged paternal engagement on non-workdays but not on workdays measured with time diary at Time 3 (9 months). The more perfectionistic fathers were towards their own parenting, the less time they spent engaged with their children on non-workdays (β = -0.27, z = -2.78, p = .005). Fathers who were more perfectionistic about their partner’s parenting spent more time engaged with their children on non-workdays (β = 0.34, z = 3.38, p = .001). In families with mothers who had greater self-oriented parenting perfectionism, fathers’ overall self-reported frequency of positive engagement was higher at Time 3 (β = 0.23, z = 2.09, p = .037).

The present study was among the first to identify both parents’ parenting perfectionism as predictors of fathers’ positive engagement in childrearing. Fathers’ parenting perfectionism was associated with their time in child enrichment activities, whereas mothers’ parenting perfectionism predicted the overall frequency of fathers’ positive engagement.

Authors

• Jia Yan, Ohio State University
  Presenting Author

• Qiong Wu, Florida State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sarah J Schoppe-Sullivan, Ohio State University
  Non-Presenting Author